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Environmental forensic investigation on soil contamination: a field study

  • Soils, Sec 3 • Remediation and Management of Contaminated or Degraded Lands • Research Article
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Abstract

Purpose

Two Pb-contaminated sites were selected to conduct environmental forensic investigation and trace the pollution source.

Materials and methods

The isotopic technology coupled with three different extraction methods (EDTA, hydrochloric acid, and aqua regia) was employed for the determination of Pb characteristics. The spatial distribution, including the horizontal and vertical, of pollution was also surveyed. The results identified that there was a factory at the center of the distribution pattern for each site.

Results and discussion

The Pb concentration was around 100–350 mg kg−1 in the soil near the factories, and only 20–50 mg kg−1 was detected when the distance was larger than 200 m. For the vertical distribution, the Pb concentration in the deep soil was inferior to that in the topsoil and subsoil by 17–61%. The difference between topsoil and subsoil was not great because of the plowing effect. The isotopic tests also showed that the characteristics of topsoil and subsoil almost overlap, while the tests of deep soil indicate they were closer to the background. For various extractions, the results of isotopic identification along with the aqua regia extraction successfully set up the background basis with a high coefficient with a correlation (0.9451) compared to using other extraction reagents (~ 0.8). On the other hand, EDTA had the highest correlation when identifying the pollution source. There was, however, no major difference between the extraction reagents used in this study (R2 value = 0.9542–0.9973).

Conclusions

This study not only successfully identified the source of pollution, but also provided an important recommendation that various extraction reagents and sampling spots should be adopted for different purposes in field studies.

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Data availability

All the data contributed to this study were included in the manuscript and supplementary material.

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Funding

High appreciation goes to the National Science Council under the Grant Number NSC101-2221-E002-113 for financial support. The authors also thank HSIPEC (National Taiwan University) for the technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Environmental Toxin and Emerging Contaminant Research, Cheng Shiu University, Kaoshiung, 83347, Taiwan

    Wei-Jhan Syu

  2. Super Micro Research and Technology Center, Cheng Shiu University, Kaoshiung, 83347, Taiwan

    Wei-Jhan Syu

  3. Department of Bioenvironmental Systems Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei City, 10617, Taiwan

    Chen-Yu Lu & Chia-Yang Chen

  4. Water Resources Center, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Chia-Yang Chen

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  1. Wei-Jhan Syu
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Wei-Jhan Syu: methodology, resources

Chen-Yu Lu: validation, investigation, writing—original draft

Chia-Yang Chen: formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, supervision

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Correspondence to Chia-Yang Chen.

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Syu, WJ., Lu, CY. & Chen, CY. Environmental forensic investigation on soil contamination: a field study. J Soils Sediments 23, 3412–3424 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03568-x

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